A Team Effort Builds Literacy

Teachers and students benefit from interdisciplinary lessons.

At Gorton High School in Yonkers, New York, ninth-grade teachers created a multidisciplinary lesson that connected their areas of language arts, science, and mathematics. For this lesson about an 18th-century plague, their students read the novel Fever 1793, studied diseases, and created charts and graphs of the plague’s exponential growth.

Using EDC’s professional development program Supported Literacy, these teachers have demonstrated the promise of integrating subject areas while building their students’ literacy skills.

“For years, high school teachers have been ensconced in their disciplines,” says EDC’s Cindy Mata-Aguilar. “Today, however, we are working together in creating lessons that infuse literacy into their day-to-day teaching, and we are crafting interdisciplinary units that build deeper understanding for students. Today’s high school teachers are seeing the power of collaborative thinking, planning, and sharing.”

Supported Literacy is funded by the Yonkers Public Schools and is being implemented with teachers from five high schools in the district.